Old Soldiers
by Panache
Summary: Old soldier never die . . . they just fade away. Ten years after the end of Zeo a series of strange interconnected events brings some of the old guard together again, but they are hardly the shiny young soldiers they once were.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: It's someone else's sandbox. I just play here because other people have all the best toys.

Author's Note: The reunion fic has become its own kind of genre to the Power Rangers. So much so that I've thought long and hard about what I could bring to the party, and this is the result. This fic is very much in my style, which means if you're for funny, fluff reminiscences and easy declarations of love, write me, I can recommend some good ones, but this ain't it. I've been wanting to do this for awhile, but have been trying to hold off and maintain some semblance of discipline in my writing. However, right now I'm studying for the bar exam (two day written exam 13 subjects of law, my career on the line), which means I'm grateful for any writing that seems to flow for me.

- + - + - + - + - + -

_St. Louis, Missouri_

_Well, this was a complete waste, _Tommy Oliver thought as he looked around the packed room, uncomfortably aware of just how out of place he was. The bar wasn't exactly _the _place to be in St. Louis—did St. Louis even _have_ a place to be?—but it was enormously popular with a particular crowd—affluent, young singles, particularly media types, people with a face to be seen. Making the circuit primarily because it was a favorite hang out for reporters not old-style, cigar-chomping, bull pen reporters, but the glossies, talking heads and style editors, it wasn't the first stop or the last, but a nice waylay, a moment to be photographed and drop a name to a gossip columnist before taking in too many martinis and a hit or two of something at a more exclusive place where cameras got broken.

It had the quiet refinement of an after hours hang-out for busy professionals, a certain cache that required him to buy new clothes and be eminently grateful he still possessed a charming smile and the kind of physique not found on moneyed professionals trapped too long behind a desk. The combination had garnered him easy admittance and the phone number of the cool as ice hostess, which he'd surreptitiously slipped to the bar-tender in exchange for a seat with a view of the entrance. Even so, he fingered his glass with the self-consciousness of someone who knew he only really met two of the requirements. _Okay, one and a half_.

He didn't want to be here. As it was he rarely frequented bars, and when he did, well, it wasn't this kind of place—no pool tables, no smoking, top shelf drinks only, and although people wore jeans, it was not dress casual. No, he'd decided on the bar because it was his only option, at least the only option that wasn't likely to get him slapped with a restraining order. St. Louis wasn't the type of city were you could pull off the unexpected pass and double-take on the street, because nobody walked. People went from air-conditioned offices, to air-conditioned elevators, to the parking garage and their air-conditioned BMWs, and parking garages were definitely restraining order territory. So in the end a bar was the only option available to manage the kind of casual, 'isn't it funny we're in the same city', encounter that a grown man could survive with dignity.

But he hadn't counted on being _so_ ridiculously out of place. True he didn't have Joe's ability to belong absolutely anywhere, but a place like this . . . well he'd just thought all his old natural ease would carry him. He could almost hear his partner laughing. _You ain't prom king anymore, Oliver._

Well, this was an explicit lesson, complete with bullet-points and visual aides. Disgusted with himself, he motioned to the bartender to close out his tab. _Fucking expensive waste of time, too_. Sure, the bar might have the best Grey-Goose martinis in town, but it didn't make much difference when you were a beer man.

He caught sight of her, just as he was peeling off the last of the bills for his too expensive drink, walking away from a mixed company group, to a small secluded table, where stopped to chat amiably with a short, prematurely bald, gentleman, who somehow managed to exude all the charisma Tommy felt he lacked.

Funny, he'd spent all night waiting for the fanfares, for that absolute heart-stopping, breathtaking moment when she'd enter the room; remembered it from high-school even, that way Kimberly Hart had of connecting with everyone, so that when she was around you felt it in the air, there was a vibe to people.

And yet, ten years later, nothing.

There'd been no trumpets, no swivel of heads, not even a murmur in the crowd, because she was nobody special, just another very important person in a room of very very important people. With her flippy, layered bob, caramel highlights, and grey pinstriped pants-suit she wasn't even the most attractive woman in the room, a pixie in a den of sirens. Strangely, the let-down was almost a relief, a freeing moment. He could do this. It would be easy to do this. Again motioning over his new friend, Trevor, he laid a few extra bills on the bar.

"See her," he pointed over to Kim, "I'd like to take her one of whatever she's having."

Trevor frowned at him. "I'm sorry, sir, but Ms. Thorton has a strict policy against accepting drinks."

The name threw him for a moment before he remembered, not Kimberly Hart anymore, not the sweetheart gymnast of Angel Grove. It was Kim Thorton, once the best paid female sportscaster in the southeastern United States. Tommy sighed, "Well then _I _would like to order for _myself_, a . . ."

He trailed off significantly as he laid out another twenty. Trevor was not an extremely well-paid bar-tender for nothing. Sliding the money into his hand without so much as a flicker of expression, he nodded, "Yes sir, one cranberry vodka tonic, coming up, and perhaps as a chaser?"

"Do you maybe just have a beer?"

- + - + - + - + - + -

"So she's sitting across from me at the table smiling that Georgia-Peach-beauty-queen smile like she's just asking whether I'd be so good as to get her another iced tea. An extra three million dollars of work, and she hasn't even cracked her makeup. I mean, she might as well have said, 'Dahlin, would you be so kind as to take this knife and hack off your balls? Could you do that for me, sugah?'"

Kim laughed at Charlie's deadpan impression of Annette Saunders, right down to the silk and grit drawl, an imitation made more humorous by the contrast to Charlie's usual south Chicago accent. When she finally calmed down enough to speak she cautioned, "Careful, I know Net, that might be her next request."

Charlie scowled and took another sip of his drink. "Fucking steel magnolia."

"Good thing I'm a California girl."

"Oh no, you may have a laid back vibe going when you're out, but I've seen you operate, you can't fool me. There's no question where you learned to screw all us stupid Cro-Magnon men. That whole naïve former gymnast, cheerleader, beauty-queen, I'm too sweet for _your _own good shit, that is pure, uncut, Southern businesswoman complete with an extra slice of peach pie."

Kim smirked with no little pride—she knew how much Charlie respected Annette—and reached over to grab a maraschino cherry fro his drink, murmuring with her best fake drawl, "But Mr. Nowak, sir, I don't know how to cook."

That earned her snort. "None of 'em do unless they've turned it into a multi-million dollar business I can't negotiate against."

She patted his arm in mock-sympathy. "Poor Charlie."

"Yeah, yeah, poor me. All arms pats and sympathetic smiles, and yet three months . . . no tongue."

"Cheryl would kill me."

"I'm willing to risk it." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"Cheryl would kill _you_."

Charlie's eyebrows stopped mid-waggle and shot up. "I'm not willing to risk that." He sighed melodramatically, "Well, my love, it appears we are doomed to carry on our separate lives, only able to admire each other from afar."

Kim smiled fondly at her friend. "Does Cheryl know how lucky she is?"

"No. Please feel free to mention it."

"Seriously, Charlie, thank you for looking me up. I was beginning to think St. Louis would never feel like home."

"Well, it's a long way from Miami or New York."

"It's a long way from a lot of things." Kim murmured quietly, a little of the old pain slipping into her voice.

He reached over, covering her wedding band from sight with one of his incongruously, meaty dockworker's hands. "Listen, I promised Cheryl I'd be good, but . . . are you really certain this is what you want?"

"Yeah, no . . ." God, her voice sounded thin and uncertain to her own ears. "It's what's best, Charlie. I wasn't meant to be a part of that scene. I'm just sorry it took me five years to figure that out."

"Don wishes it had taken you twenty more. He would have given them all the finger for you, kid."

Her laugh was hollow. "And been absolutely miserable once he'd done it. You know him. He wasn't meant to live out of that world, any more that I was meant to live in it."

"You guys were magic though."

She closed her eyes, partly to keep the tears at bay, partly in realization, and managed a knowing smile. "You saw him, last week in New York, didn't you?"

"That obvious, huh? No wonder Annette is ripping me a new one."

Sucking in what failed to be a calming breath, she asked, "How is he?"

"Let's put it this way." He stroked the little band of gold on her finger, "You're not the only one still wearing this after six months."

Snatching her hand back, she sighed, "It's for the best Charlie."

"Sure it is, kid."

They smiled at each other in a sad companionable silence, mourning the death of something beautiful. Kim just kept hoping that one day she would stop feeling like she'd killed it.

Someone set down another drink on her table, and she blinked in confusion.

"Excuse me, but I didn't order--" The words died on her tongue as she looked up into a pair of brown eyes, just as familiar to her as they were ten years ago.

Tommy smiled down at her. "It's nice to see you again, Kim."

For a moment, she was speechless—not him, not here. St. Louis was supposed to be a city free of complications, a place where she could regroup and figure out what direction her life was supposed to go in after Don had turned her world upside down so completely. The man standing before her embodied all the things she'd come to avoid.

"Kid?" Charlie's hand on her arm was gentle, questioning. It grounded her a bit, snapped her back into the here and now.

Gathering all the poise that had earned her Murrow and Peabody nods, she turned to smile at Charlie. "I'm so sorry. Charlie, may I present an old high-school friend, Tommy Oliver. Tommy, this is Charlie Nowak."

"Pleased to meet you." Tommy extended a hand to Charlie, giving him one of his best friendly smiles.

It had no effect. Charlie shook his hand in a way that Kim knew was meant to size the other man, searching his face as he did so. After they broke off, Tommy asked her, "Would you mind if I joined you?"

Part of her wanted to say yes, she would mind a great deal, that in fact she minded him being here in the middle of nowhere mid-America, but all that social grace she'd gained over a five-year marriage to one of Florida's most prominent businessmen, kicked in. "No, no of course not."

Charlie stood up. "Here, you can take mine. I need to go have a little chat with the bar-tender."

As Tommy settled himself in the chair Charlie had vacated, Kim watched her friend bear-down on the bar-tender with the kind of Mack-truck determination that usually earned him his paycheck as a corporate pit-bull. She sighed, "I hope you gave the bar-tender a very good tip for telling you my drink."

"Yeah, I had to pay him and extra twenty for it."

She groaned as she watched Charlie tear into the young man. _Not nearly good enough_.

"Excuse me, Tommy, I'll be right back. I have to go save a life." Before he could protest, she was off her chair and walking to the bar.

Charlie was just working up a full head of steam. "What part of strict policy do you people have trouble with? I don't think the arrangement was no drinks unless the tip is _really_ good, was it? Was it? Tell me, just how good was it? What are you gonna do with all that cash that you've earned praying on someone else's heartache?"

The bar-tender was ignoring him from the most part, but his hands shook a little as he poured the drink for the lady down at the other end.

Putting both her hands on her friend's shoulders she whispered, "Charlie, hush."

He dropped his head, shaking it slowly back and forth in sad disappointment. "You're too sweet for your own good, you know that kid?"

"What happened to my steely Magnolia persona?" She protested with mock offense, but he saw through her bravado.

"Got stripped away by pretty-boy over there," He turned to survey Tommy, who was doing his best not to be aware of their scrutiny. "Want to explain him to me?"

"Not really, no." Kim sighed. She knew she should be telling Charlie not to stare, but his rudeness served as a nice shield for her own assessment. Why was he here? Not St. Louis, after all it was still a city, for all its small-community attitudes, but here in this bar. He looked amazing with his closely cropped hair, a goatee that gave him an air of coarseness uncommon here balanced by intellectualism of the rimless-frame glasses, but her trained eye could tell from the way he wore the wine-colored shirt and dark-charcoal slacks that they weren't his usual every day clothes. He was too conscious of them. Likewise, he was too conscious of this place of how things were done here. This wasn't his usual hangout, and she didn't like the connotations of that.

What did he want from her? He knew of her marriage. She'd bet on that. She hadn't sent him an invitation to him, but she'd sent them to the old gang—Jason, Trini, Zach, and Billy. Only Billy's had come back marked returned to sender. Surely one of them had told him, and even if they hadn't, well it wasn't exactly an unpublicized event. So what was this about?

"Do you want me to get rid of him?" Charlie asked, half-meaning the offer.

Kim shook her head. "He'd break you in half."

"I don't have to do it physically." This offer he meant completely.

To her horror, she found herself thinking about it. It would be so much simpler, but she owed him more that. She watched as Tommy tapped absentmindedly at the neck of his bottle, trying hard not to look at her, once meeting her eyes and smiling awkwardly before going back to looking at the photographs in the alcove.

The sweetly self-conscious move tugged at her, brought up memories of another man in another bar, who had been just as sweetly self-conscious.

The bar had been an almost empty jazz club, and the drink hadn't been vodka tonics then, but cosmos, the height of fashion for a girl who'd just turned twenty-one and seen the first season of 'Sex and the City.' He'd sent the drink by a waitress, written something on the napkin—Italian from his favorite movie, _Bongiorno Principesa_—and it had made her laugh, seeing him there, so disparate from her image of him, rubbing Kyle's hair affectionately, imploring her, with mock-desperation, to set his no-account son straight.

It hadn't been his intention to pick her up, and he hadn't, but it had started . . . _something_ . . . something that made her ask to be seated at his table the next time she came, and seven years later led to the gold band still adorning her finger and a strict, no drinks from strangers, policy.

She'd owed Don more, too.

"No, no it's okay." She finally responded, and kissed Charlie on the cheek, "I'll see you next week, okay?"

But he grabbed her wrist before she could turn away and gently tilted her chin to look at him. "Don't get yourself hurt, Kim, not so soon."

"It's just an old friend, Charlie."

He kissed her on the forehead, whispering, "That's what's got me scared."

- + - + - + - + - + -

_Angel Grove, California_

_Why do they always reorganize just when I'm starting to get the hang of things?_ Katherine Hillard mused as she wandered aimlessly up and down the grocery store aisles, trying to figure out why the powers that be had decided moving the ketchup and mustard away from the other condiments and over to the "party aisle," with the chips, sodas, and hot dog buns, was such a good idea. Determining that it would just have to remain one of life's great mysteries, she stopped in front of the frozen food, pulled out her coupon file, and began to calculate the best deal.

How had this become her life? Nine years ago, she fought intergalactic battles, saved the world on a daily basis, and surrounded herself with close dynamic friends. Now her daily routine consisted of pinching pennies to get by on her teacher's salary. The only battles she fought were with the girls on the dance team she coached, and the closest friend she had was Mary Connor the chain-smoking, over-weight, science department head whose favorite topic of discussion was why the teacher in-services they were required to attend were nothing but a load of crap.

No, that wasn't really fair.

No it wasn't fair at all. She had Jason.

Yes, she had Jason, sweet, steady, utterly confounding Jason. But there was always that one, niggling little issue that prevented her from counting him whenever she tallied her friends—she didn't really know exactly _how_ she had him.

Forcefully drawing her thoughts away from the path she had refused to let them travel time after time, Kat turned her attention back to the task at hand.

_I have got to learn to like to cook._

Firmly making the same resolution she made every week, because frozen meals were prohibitively expensive, even with the coupons, she picked out a few passable selections from the brand that was on sale this week. Remembering, as she did so, one of the many decadent feasts she and her classmates had treated themselves to back in London, when they were all convinced they were about to become world renowned stars, and go down in the history of dance as the group of bohemians who had single-handedly revived popular interest in classical ballet, Kat allowed herself a rueful smile. They hadn't been bohemians by a long shot. Mostly middle-class kids spending every last penny of their parent's money pursuing a dream, while convincing themselves that they were deeply misunderstood, tragic, starving souls.

No they most definitely had not been Bohemians.

But they had been hopeful, and they had been talented, and some of them had even gone on to reach the dream, and the rest . . . well the rest were probably doing exactly what she was doing, inspiring the next generation of dreamers, while they lived out their drab little lives. God, when had everything taken such a hairpin turn?

It wasn't that she really resented the turn her life had taken. She loved teaching and coaching. They gave everything else so much meaning. It was just sometimes, when she was feeling in a particularly morbid mood, she wondered how the monotony had crept in, and she would think of all her fellow Rangers, all those brave souls filled with so much promise, and wonder whether they ever stared up at the ceiling thinking that something had gone drastically wrong. Or was she the only one?

"They want how much?"

Maybe it was the turn her thoughts had taken, that she'd been dwelling on her former comrades with such intensity, maybe it was just that people's voices were sometimes strikingly similar, but at the scrap of conversation that had drifted towards her, Kat whirled around on her heel, utterly convinced that she knew that voice.

And just as quickly wheeled back around in profound embarrassment.

Whoever the man behind her was, he was definitely _not_ the person she'd been thinking. In the first place, he was scary. The type of man that if he'd been walking towards her at night she'd find an open shop or restaurant to go into until he'd passed. Rough and intense, with dirty hair pulled back into a ponytail, out of date clothes, and apparently a penchant for talking to himself, he made her quietly wonder whether maybe it would be a good idea to call the store manager. Then, as she stood there debating whether she really needed one of those skillet meals because that would involve moving down the aisle towards him, it sunk in with Kat exactly _what_ he was muttering to himself.

". . . can rewire an entire interplanetary communications system, but can't plan for inflation, very nice, very intelligent."

It wasn't just that the words were so incongruous to the general mutterings in a grocery store. After all wasn't believing in aliens one of the typical past-times of dangerous tramps? No, rather it was the way he said the words, wryly, intelligently . . . sanely, as though he really _had_ rewired an interplanetary communications system . . .

Slowly, nonchalantly, she turned halfway, and pretending to peruse the nutrition label on a bag of frozen peas, studied him out of the corner of her eye, looking for some indication that she wasn't crazy.

Well, if she wasn't, he'd been through hell, possibly twice. His face was gaunt, hollow, and while that alone might have almost been attractive to some women, there was an unnatural paleness to his skin that gave the impression he'd been through a long illness. All of this faded into the background however as he shifted slightly, causing the lose strands of his dirty hair to move as well, and there, in stark relief, running down the side of his face and along his neck were a pair of twisted, cord-like scars.

Stifling a gasp, Kat moved to put the peas back on the shelf, suddenly feeling very much like an intruder, but at that moment the object of her scrutiny did something that nearly made her drop those peas.

"Well, you've lived on less." He muttered to himself, and as he pulled out one of the bags he'd been looking over, the corners of his mouth curved ever so slightly in a self-deprecating smile that she knew all too well.

"Billy."

She wasn't even aware she had spoken the name out loud until he paused in the midst of reaching for another bag. Then, without once glancing up from what he was doing to look in either direction, he dropped the other bag into his basket, and turned to head down the aisle, away from her.

Thinking maybe he hadn't really heard her, Kat took a few quick steps forward.

"Billy!" This time she spoke loudly enough that a few people turned to look at her, but he did not, just continued to make his way down the aisle, and then with a turn was gone, leaving her standing there feeling like the kind of idiot one does after chasing an old friend down on the street only to find out it was someone they'd never met.

Except, he had paused the first time.

Hadn't he?

- + - + - + - + - + -

_Houston, Texas_

"Her director says that she's got real talent, that she could go pretty far, like the next Yo-Yo Ma or something, but cellos cost serious money."

Rocky didn't look up from his paperwork he had propped on his knee. "I thought the school provided that. I mean that's why she chose it and not the violin, right?"

Carl shook his head. "They do, but those are crap practice instruments, not like what she'd need. Not to mention the private lessons, the travel, the extra tutoring for all the school she'd miss, but . . . _Geez_ DeSantos, someone comes to you and says your kid's special, what're you gonna do?

Rocky frowned at his partner, a beefy middle-aged black man, who frankly thought all four of his kids were special—next Jordan, next Einstein, or, what was it last week? Oh yeah, . . . next Sidney Poitier. Carl and his wife Bella poured everything they had into those kids. Both worked—Carl with Rocky as a paramedic and Bella two jobs, one as a manager at a Starbucks and the other working out of her home as seamstress, specializing in re-enactment costuming, something Rocky tried to talk to her about as little as possible—and still the couple constantly found new ways to cut back, to squeeze out an extra hundred or so for education because one kid or another was destined for greatness. Still with Precious, his eldest daughter, Rocky thought Carl might be on to something. He'd heard the girl play and, even to his musically challenged ear, there was something magical about what Precious could do with a bow.

"How much is the cello?"

Carl narrowed his eyes, and then shook his head. "No man, no. I can't let you do that."

"I haven't said I'm doing anything yet."

"Yeah, but I can tell. Look Rocky, it's one thing play Santa Claus, but a cello? No, they're my kids, my responsibility. 'Sides one of these days you're gonna meet a beautiful woman who'll be smart enough to marry you and give you lots of little Rockys, and what're you gonna tell them? Sorry kids, spent all my money on my no account partner's children."

"First, it wouldn't be my money. It'd be Nana Mia's, and you know what Precious meant to her. Carl, your daughter came and sat with her once a week for the last three years of her life. Precious was as close as Nana Mia ever got to a great-granddaughter, you know she'd want this. Second, think of Precious. Stop being a proud ass, and think of your daughter."

"Yeah, maybe." Carl grunted.

"That's all I'm asking. Go home talk with Bella. If it makes you feel better, consider it an investment and when she becomes the next Yo-Yo Ma she can start a foundation in Nana Mia's name or something."

"You're a good man."

"Yeah, yeah, just don't cry on my report and screw it up. I hate doing these damn things."

"_91-20, 91-20. What's your location?"_

Carl was already shifting the ambulance into drive and surveying traffic, as Rocky grabbed the handset to respond to the call. "This is 91-20, we are at the corner of Bay Area Boulevard and Red Bluff Road. Got something for us?"

After a moment that meant the dispatcher was checking other paramedic's locations, she came back. "_We have a female gunshot victim at 3000 Nasa Road One, parking lot of the Hilton Hotel_. _You're the closest._"

Carl flipped on the flashers and siren and took off. Rocky closed his eyes and kept talking to the dispatcher. Some teams worked with one guy driving as the other called out openings, but Carl and Rocky had quickly established that the only way they'd survive working together was if Rocky kept his eyes closed when Carl drove.

"Someone still there?"

"_Patrol officers, they found her_."

Rocky breathed a sigh of relief. All the cops had basic first-aid that gave her a better chance than if a civilian had found her. "Tell them we're . . ."

He paused, and Carl supplied the answer. "Three minutes out, tops."

"Three minutes away."

"_Roger that_."

Slipping the handset back into place, he moved to the back to prep the stretcher and concentrated very hard on not thinking. Not thinking, not worrying about life slipping away as you got there, was the only way to survive this job for any length of time. Carl drove, Rocky prepped and neither one of them thought very much.

They reached the Hilton just under two and a half minutes, thanks to the relatively empty streets. The patrol car had its lights flashing, and a police officer Rocky recognized was trying to keep the tight knot of "concerned citizens" at bay. _Welcome to the big city everybody_.

The moment the ambulance came to a semblance of a stop, Rocky pushed open the doors and called out, "What do we got?"

The officer who responded was a petite, Hispanic female, who couldn't have been more than a year or two out of the academy. From the tremor in her voice, Rocky would guess this was her first shooting. "Asian female, late-twenties, early-thirties, from what I can tell single shot to the stomach. Don't know about exit wounds, didn't want to move her."

"Good. That's good." He assured her, trying to make her understand with those few words that whatever happened, she'd done what she could.

Carl came around, and they lifted the stretcher out, setting it down beside the woman. The all black clothing she wore obscured his ability to see how much blood she'd lost, but he could smell it as a he bent to check her airways and breathing. "Breathing is shallow, but steady."

"Her bp's low."

"Miss, can you hear me?" Rocky spoke to her in an effort to ascertain awareness. She flopped her head in the direction of his voice, and her eyes flickered just a little, but otherwise there was no response. "She's not alert, but I think she's voice responsive."

Carl raised his head and spoke to crowd. "Anyone know when she was shot."

A thin man in a bathrobe yelled back. "The alarm started going off, maybe . . ."

He looked to a plump woman who was probably his wife, and she gave the time, "Fifteen minutes probably --"

"We were called because of the alarm." The young officer added, "We think she broke the car window just before she collapsed. We don't know with what."

Rocky nodded as he slipped the oxygen mask over her head. With her pixie cut and minimalist dress, she had a cool, efficient look to her; he could believe that she'd had the presence of mind to break a car window to get people's attention.

"Shit." Carl muttered as he finished cutting away her shirt so he could pressure dress the wound. "We gotta move."

Together they counted to three and shifted her to the stretcher.

"Guys . . ." The young cop was leaning down to look at something on the ground.

"We're taking her to Clear Lake Regional." Rocky told her. "You got any questions, ask her later."

"Guys . . ."

They finished lifting her into the back, and Rocky turned, "Dammit, what! I'm losing my golden-hour."

The lady-cop held up a blood splattered badge. "Trini Nguyen Kwan. She's a Fed."

- + - + - + - + - + -

So there you go. As always I welcome comments and criticism with open arms.

Note on Authenticity: I am working with cities I'm fairly familiar with to maintain the realism, and I've tried to research the technical aspects to the best of my ability. But please keep in mind I'm writing this on a limited time schedule. If you notice any glaring errors, I apologize.

Panache


	2. Shadows of History

Disclaimer: It's someone else's sandbox. I just play here because other people have all the best toys.

Author's note: Good news – I'm now officially a lawyer, with a job and everything. Bad news – I'm now officially a lawyer with a job and everything. I should probably give up writing, but the world's a lot less fun without fanfic. So on with the show.

Appreciation: A HUGE hug of thanks to Dagmar, without whom my Kim would have been total crap. If you enjoy Kim, send chocolates to her. Anything you think sucks, that's all me.

- + - + - + - + - + -

Kim questioned herself for the entire walk over. What was she doing? Why the _hell_ didn't she take Charlie up on his offer? Why was Tommy here? Had he thought about her? What did he think of her now? Oh God, what did she think she was doing?

But before she could second guess herself into running away, she was there, standing across from him. Tommy. Tommy so close she could touch him.

Suddenly she felt . . . not shy . . . but self-conscious in some way. He'd known her at the start, seen her before the designer suits and two hundred dollar color and cut, before she'd become the first female face of Florida sports, before she'd fallen in love with a man she'd had no business even dating. Did he approve of this finished product?

"Hey," she murmured the word without thought, more a breath of resignation that this was really going to happen than a conscious greeting.

"Hey." He smiled, half-standing as she slid back onto the stool. _He shouldn't do that_, she thought. He shouldn't be confusing her by acting like a gentleman, by making her feel . . . something she frankly wasn't all that anxious to feel again, by right that was still someone else's position, no matter what her divorce papers said.

With the pleasantries dispensed, they lapsed into what could only be described as the second most excruciating silence of her life.

"_This is Don Thorton." His voice sounded in her ear, clipped and professional, and Kim's hand tightened on the receiver. She hadn't expected him to pick up himself. She'd been spending her time trying to figure out how to get his assistant James to put her through, not deciding what she'd say once he did._

"_Hello?" he repeated._

"_Um, hi. Hi, this is Kim." She winced as she said it, half expecting him to respond 'Kim, who?' After all it wasn't as though he'd asked her to call, or given her any indication that he'd welcome it if she did. Hell, he hadn't even given her this number. It was just a memory, left over from her days with Kyle._

"_Kim." The timber of his voice changed, just fractionally, not enough for her to know what he was thinking._

"_I- I really don't know why I'm calling."_

"_Oh." And that was all he said, the single little syllable hanging there and then silence, silence which stretched far past the point of politeness or normal human interaction. _

_Still no dial tone came and she didn't hang up. She felt stupid, standing by the window of her apartment where she got the best cell reception, looking out on the dumpster in her alley way, trying to think of something to keep him on the line just a little bit longer._

"_I'm sorry," she let out a breathy awkward laugh, "I shouldn't have- I don't know what I was thinking . . ."_

"_Don't hang up. Please. We've just had a new phone system installed, and I can't figure out how to work it. I'll spend the rest of the day trying to get your number off the caller i.d."_

_A little flutter went through Kim at his words and she tried not to let the ridiculous smile on her face creep into her voice. "Okay. Okay, I won't."_

This time the silence wasn't broken by anything nearly as charming. As it stretched, becoming heavier and more impenetrable with each passing breath, they began avoiding each other's gaze, their eyes dancing from point to point around the room. Kim gave up trying to think of anything to say about half way through. She was tired, tired of making ridiculous meaningless small-talk, wondering all the while what the person really thought of her, tired of explaining herself. She'd come to St. Louis to get away from that. If Tommy wanted something from her, he'd have to be the one to make the effort. She just didn't have it in her.

"So . . . um . . ." Tommy sucked air through his teeth, the action so unrefined and self-revealing, that for the first time since sitting down, Kim looked at his face. The Tommy she'd remembered had been an Adonis of perfection, rough but not crass, a gentleman but not a pansy, just removed enough to be mysterious without being emotionally unavailable. The Tommy she remembered did not suck air through his teeth while obviously scrambling for something to say. Suddenly, she was extremely grateful it was this Tommy who had shown up. At the moment she liked him better than the memory.

"So . . . um . . ." he repeated the words, obviously still searching for inspiration. Then his eyes settled on the twin pictures hanging in their alcove. "What do you think of the new Busch Stadium?"

For a second, Kim couldn't manage to do anything other than stare at him. It was just such a horribly awkward question. And then it came, bubbling up from somewhere deep in her gut . . . laughter . . . hysterical, relieved laughter. She was probably offending him deeply, but she couldn't help it. Over ten years, and the only thing they could manage to say to each other was 'How 'bout them Cards.'

Then she realized he was laughing as well, intermittent, embarrassed chuckles that built in frequency until he had to put his drink down lest it end up on his shiny new shirt.

"I'm sorry--" She apologized, still laughing as she did so.

"Don't be--" he hadn't stopped either.

"It's just--"

"An incredibly stupid question," he completed the thought for her.

"Yeah." They trailed off again, but the silence that came to fill the space between them was gentle, forgiving. He smiled at her and to her surprise she found herself smiling back.

"God, it's good to see you, Kim."

She knew this was her cue. Her moment to say that it was good to see him, too, and a part her actually wanted to say it, wanted to tell him that for that moment when they'd been laughing, she'd felt less alone than she had in a long time, but the rest of her knew what a cruel thing that would be. It implied she'd want to see him again, and she hadn't made that decision. But she had to say something . . .

"I thought you were in Boston."

His smile faltered. "I was, but that was . . ." he rolled his eyes upwards as though clicking through a mental file, "I guess, almost a year and two moves ago."

"Oh. I guess you must move around a lot with the army and all."

"Mm," he shook his head as he finished swallowing his drink, "I'm not with the army anymore, haven't been for at least, two years now."

"Oh." She felt stupid, repeating the word over again, but she didn't know what to else to say now that she'd demonstrated just how horribly out of touch she was.

"_Why don't you go back?"_

"_What?" Kim managed around the rather large bite she'd just taken of her pulled-pork sandwich. Quickly, she brought a hand up to cover her mouth, hoping Don hadn't noticed the faux pas._

"_To your hometown," he clarified with a smile that told her she'd been caught, "You talk about it all the time. Why don't you go back?"_

"_Oh, um," she faltered, taken off-guard by his question, "I don't know. I guess I just never had a reason. I mean mom's in Paris. Dad is you know . . . away."_

"_There are always your friends."_

"_Maybe," she shrugged, half-heartedly. In truth she wasn't so certain about that. Things had be god-awful awkward the last time she'd been back, and those who she would have counted on under any circumstances were either no longer in Angel Grove or going through their own issues. She wasn't sure she was strong enough to face being the odd girl out in a place where she was supposed to belong._

"_But then, of course, I suppose you'd miss your friends here." Don ventured hesitantly._

_A tremor ran through her at his words. So often she'd mentally cursed Don's pitch-perfect poker voice, always neutral and businesslike. Even those times when she could hear the shades they were too subtle for her to find the meaning. But now for the first time, she could hear something layered beneath his words—hope. Turning on the park bench, she caught his gaze and held it, willing him to hear her response, "I would. I'd miss them very much." _I'd miss you, very much.

_He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling in way made delicious by its rarity, "Well, I'm sure they'd miss you, too."_

_And for the first time she thought of Florida as home._

For split second her brain scrambled to say something that would make her seem connected with the others, leave Tommy thinking it was just him she hadn't bothered to keep tabs on, but she'd never be able to keep it up. _Face it Kim, you were so scared of your friends leaving you in the dust, you made the preemptive strike._ Might as well own it. Raising her glass, she smiled in what she hoped would pass for mere polite interest rather than the sudden aching hunger for connection that had taken hold inside.

"So what is it you do now?"

Tommy came alive at the question as though he'd been waiting for it all night. For the first time tonight, she saw a glimpse of the passionate young man she'd fallen for dance in the eyes behind those glasses. "It sounds cheesy, but I'm a consultant."

She laughed, "Isn't everybody?"

"Not this type of consultant." Leaning forward in the manner of a fellow conspirator, he tapped the table significantly, "I'm still in the game, Kim."

The bottom of her stomach dropped out. Why was he telling her this? Twenty minutes ago he'd been out of her life completely, that entire piece of her past nothing more than a fragile memory, kept carefully tucked away for fear it might shatter if she took it out too often. Now he sat before her as though the last ten years had never happened, saying the word game like he held Excalibur in one hand and the Holy Grail in the other.

Suddenly things slid into terrifying place—Tommy here in this bar, which he'd never visited, wearing clothes he'd never worn. He'd sought her out, and not out of some romantic notion of sweeping her off her feet or helping her to rebuild her life, but because he wanted something from her. She looked down at her hands because if she looked in his eyes, she'd almost believe she might want to give it to him.

"Wh- Why are you telling me this?" A tremor ran through her voice, three parts fear, one part anticipation. She waited for him to confirm her suspicions.

Silence descended for that third time that night, and Kim realized he'd said more than he intended. For a second she thought he'd lie, prayed he'd try to play it off as a slip or bragging. But Tommy had never shrunk from an opportunity to pursue the fight.

"Because, I need your help, Kim."

And there it was. Still she didn't lift her head. Her gazed remained fixed on the center of the table, and she could almost see the gauntlet resting between them. So, now it was her choice. Pick it up and she was almost a Ranger again, almost his Kimberly, ten years erased in second. Leave it rest and the past ten years remained, she'd go on living in reality. She chose the only option she could handle.

"No."

- + - + - + - + - + -

"Penny for your thoughts."

"Hmmm?" Kat looked up dreamily from the mug of tea she'd been contemplating.

Jason smiled at the woman curled up on his couch, "Okay, I'll up it to a nickel, but that's my final offer."

"Mm, big spender."

"Hey, I'm a man of limited means."

"Aah . . ." She murmured noncommittally, stalling in that way she did when she couldn't quite decide what exactly she wanted to do.

Content to let her come to the decision in her own time, Jason leaned back in his chair, watching as she sipped her tea. It had to be cold by now. His had started to cool a good fifteen minutes ago. But still Kat continue to drink as though it were a comforting steaming hot mug. It was an old habit, manufactured by a bittersweet lie that neither of them had ever had the heart to stop.

Even now he could feel her gentle hands, intertwining with his, extracting the cheap styrofoam cup still half full with the tepid liquid, and replacing it with a fresh one. He knew, if he closed his eyes, he'd see that hospital waiting room, see her sitting next to him in those horribly uncomfortable chairs, smiling and telling him she liked her tea cold anyway.

Suddenly the seven years of pretense was just too stifling. Grabbing his tea and getting up from his chair in one fluid motion, he walked over to take hers.

"Here. Let me get you a fresh cup."

She pulled it back from his extended hand. "Jason, it's fine."

Ignoring her protests, he reached over to grab it. "It's ice-cold."

"That's okay. I like-" She stopped as his hand tightened on hers.

"Don't say it," he ground out through clenched teeth.

Kat's grip on the mug loosened, and he slid it out from between her bloodless hands. Unable to look at her, he turned away. He knew what he'd see in her face. Fear. It was same every time, every time he dared to take one of these steps, to shed a little more of the past.

It had occurred to him on more than one occasion that Kat kept him trapped. That were it not for her own reticence to move forward he might have done so years ago. She was unhealthy for him in the worst way. But for at least three of the last six years she'd been almost the only thing keeping him going, and once he was able to travel under his own power, he found he couldn't leave her behind.

Neither of them said a word as he put the kettle on, rinsed out the mugs, and measured out the looseleaf tea. The little ritual calmed him. He'd never been a big fan of hot drinks, coffee, tea, hot-chocolate, you name it, none of it held any appeal. It had been Emily and Kat's drink, their little moment of girl time. The Pink Ranger had brought the habit back with her from London, and Emily had instantly fallen in love with the quiet, mindfulness of it all. Later when his wife couldn't handle a kettle herself, Kat had taught him to make it for her. After that, well . . . he just kept making it.

Caught up in the memory, he neglected to listen for the telltale rumble that marked just the start of the boil. Too late a sharp, shrieking whistle of steam pierced his reverie. Hastily, he grabbed the kettle and moved it off the heat.

For a moment he thought he'd been fast enough, then a tiny, sweet voice called out, "Daddy?"

Shooting him a look that clearly said, '_See what you did,_' Kat got up off the couch, and made her way back to Ellie's room. Jason followed

"It's okay, sweetie." Kat murmured as she sat on the bed, "Your silly daddy just let the kettle boil too long."

"Oh," Ellie murmured sleepily as she curled up against Kat's thigh, "Can I have some?"

Kat smiled, "Not tonight. You have to go back to sleep."

"Tell me a story."

Kat looked over at him, waiting for a decision. Jason shook his head. "You already had one. You only get one a night."

Ellie shook her head, "No. I get one before I go to sleep."

_Why you little conniver . . ._ Jason thought in amusement. His daughter's powers of wheedling would worry him if it weren't for how mundane and old-fashioned her wishes were. He and Kat looked at each other, knowing they'd been trapped. Jason shrugged his shoulders in resignation.

"Okay," Kat murmured indulgently, stroking Ellie's dark brown hair, "Which one would you like to hear?"

"Tell me how I got my name."

Kat's hand stopped, and she glanced uneasily over at him. Concentrating hard on keeping his features blank, Jason stepped out of the room, drawing the door closed behind him. This time though for some reason, he stayed there, his hand on the doorknob, listening as the tale unfolded.

"When you were still just a part of your mommy, she and daddy sat down and tried to choose a name for you. They wanted it to be just right. The most perfect name that would hold all their hopes and dreams for you in one word."

"Mommy wanted to name me something strong." Ellie murmured, supplying the next line to a story she already knew by heart.

"That's right. Your mommy wanted you to have the strongest name. One carried by strong women. She wanted to call you Abigail, 'joy of the father'."

Outside, Jason rested his forehead against the door. He could still hear Emily. _I want you to remember what she is Jason. I want her to know she was named after someone proud, someone great._

"But your daddy wanted to name you after your mommy, who he thought was the strongest, bravest, most beautiful woman in the world."

"And was she?"

Jason whispered the next words along with Kat, "Yes. Yes, she was."

"But your mom was also the most stubborn woman in the world." Kat continued, "And for a long time it looked like you weren't going to have a name at all."

Ellie giggled, "That's just silly."

"Isn't it?" Kat laughed, "Well, we couldn't just go around calling you old what's-her-name? Now could we?"

There was a silence, and Jason knew his daughter was emphatically shaking her head 'no', just as the story required.

"Well, someone had to save you from such a horrible fate. So in flew your very own fairy god-mother, named . . ."

"Aunt Kat!"

"And this very wise, very beautiful, fairy god-mother, thought long and hard, and finally she came up with the most perfect name."

"Eleanor Anne Lee."

"Eleanor Anne Lee." Kat repeated softly.

"_What about Eleanor or Elizabeth? Emily can't tell you those names aren't strong enough. Give her Emily's middle name, and then she'll also have her mother's initials . . . Jason . . . you owe your daughter the chance to be her own person . . . give her her own name . . ."_

"Eleanor after great queens, a very beautiful queen of Europe and a very wise one who ruled right here in America."

"Anne after Mommy."

"And Lee after your Daddy. So you see you're very special. Most little girls are only named by two people, but _you_ . . . you were named by three. You were named by three and you are loved by three . . ."

Jason inched the door open, watching as Kat leaned over to kiss Ellie on the cheek.

"Your daddy loves you."

Ellie turned her head automatically, and Kat kissed her other cheek. "Your mommy loves you."

"And I love you." She placed a final kiss on Ellie's forehead, and gently extricated herself, turning to go.

"I love you, too, Aunt Kat" Ellie murmured, and Jason could see the tiny curve of Kat's smile. She looked up at him, and he smiled in response.

Ellie's little voice continued, fading as she drifted off to sleep. "And mommy loves you . . . and daddy loves you . . ."

The light went out of Kat's eyes, the smile dropping from her face. Averting her gaze, she brushed past him, muttering, "It's getting late. I- I should be going."

_Oh Ellie, we have to have a talk about things you shouldn't say to your Aunt Kat._

Gently pulling the door shut in hopes his daughter wouldn't hear the fight he knew was coming, Jason moved down the hall after her.

"Kat . . ."

Already she had opened the door and was slipping on her coat, she didn't even turn. "We have an early practice tomorrow morning. It's getting into the busy season, so I probably won't be able to come around much. If I don't make it to dinner tomorrow, tell Eleanor I'm sorry."

"Kat stop." Grabbing at her shoulder, he turned her to face him. He didn't want to let her go. Even though they'd played this scene out before, more times than he cared to count, this time was different; he could feel it. Kat had been pushed too far tonight.

"I saw Billy today."

For a split second he thought she was lying, that in an effort to shock him out of having this argument again, she'd chosen the most hurtful, most ludicrous thing possible. Then she looked up.

"No." His hands slid from her shoulders, dead and lifeless. Just like Billy. Billy. Alive. Risen from the dead like Lazarus. Except Jason couldn't remember exactly when he'd died, when they'd written off the absolute radio silence from Aquitar as a sign there was nothing to contact. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm not sure." Kat's voice was scathing, laced with the same acid self-hatred running through his veins. "He didn't look anything like Billy."

"But . . ."

"But it _felt_ like him."

His mind fought the idea. "It _felt _like him? What does that mean?"

"I don't know. It's just that when I saw him; I knew it was Billy."

"And you just left him there?" He advanced on her, barely aware of his actions until her back connected with the door frame.

Kat tilted her chin in defiance, "Yes, Jason. I saw Billy and simply walked away." She shoved at him. "Is that how well you know me? I called out to him. He didn't respond. What was I supposed to do? Chase him down the street?"

"Why not?"

When she didn't respond, he looked over. Kat's shoulders were hunched, her face tight.

"What?" Jason asked, "Kat . . . what is it?"

"Because if he wasn't Billy--"

"You just said --"

"I _know_ what I just said, but I wasn't sure, and if it wasn't Billy . . ." She shook her head, as though trying to rid it of the memory. "I just didn't feel safe."

He almost laughed, almost . . . but fear lay in Kat's voice, fear so real that he couldn't help but reach out to her, and when he pulled her to him, wrapping her in his arms, she didn't protest, didn't fight.

She buried her head against his neck. "Oh God, Jason, I just let him walk away! I _knew_ it was Billy, and I just let him go. But he looked like a homeless person." She pulled back, her eyes pleading with him to understand, and forgive. "He looked like a crazy, dangerous, homeless man and I just reacted . . . which is insane because he's Billy, he'd never hurt anyone."

"Shh, shh," Pulling her back against him, Jason stroked Kat's hair. Even as his mind raced, he tried to provide her with some kind reassurance, "We'll find him. We can call shelters tomorrow, and in the evening, I'll drop Ellie off with my parents and we'll search Angel Grove street by street if we have to. Okay?"

Kat nodded, "Okay."

"Do you want to stay here tonight? I can make up the sofa bed. Ellie would be thrilled."

"No, no that's okay. I think I can manage the walk across the complex to my apartment." Visibly pulling herself together, she stepped away and managed a wobbly smile, "Besides, we really do have an early practice tomorrow."

"Well, be safe."

"Come on, I was a Power Ranger," she quipped, "who's going to get the drop on me?"

- + - + - + - + - + -

"Kim! Kim!" Tommy called after her as he followed her out into the parking lot. She wasn't stopping. Desperate just to get her to stop, to listen, he yelled, "Dammit Kim will you just listen to me?"

She turned on her heel so sharply he had to pull up short to avoid running into her. "Okay, I'm listening."

"Well not _here_," he gestured to the parking lot. It was wide open with at least forty cars and people coming and going. Not exactly the cone of silence, as Joe would say.

Kim rolled her eyes, "Oh, give me a- do you think anyone in this parking lot actually cares? The world is not all secret identities and monsters to fight, Tommy, some people are just trying to get through the everyday struggle of living."

She wasn't listening at all! She thought he was playing stupid children's games. How could she stand there among all these infantile people, with their superficial worries about who had the best toys and accuse him of not living in reality?

"Yeah, I'm sure it's real hell for these people," he raised the back of his hand to his forehead, and managed his best falsetto, "Oh my God, I'm wearing last week's dress, how will I ever go on?"

Kim looked like she'd been struck and too late he realized that he'd let a little more of his partner's influence show through than was probably prudent.

Narrowing her eyes, Kim took a step forward and hissed, "I _am _these people, in case you've forgotten."

Desperate to repair his mistake, to make her understand that he wasn't judging her, Tommy reached out to grab her shoulders, "No, you're not. You're better than this. Why do you think I came to you for help? Because I know you, Kim."

"No, you don't," she wrenched herself out his grasp, "You don't know me at all."

At the end of his rope, he stared at her in disbelief, and as he did something happened—all the memories of the thousand-watt smile and cheerful bravery that he'd superimposed on this woman fell away, and he saw her—small and hurt and very, very tired. He didn't like it. "You know what, you're right. I don't know you, because the Kimberly Hart I know would jump at the chance to help. The Pink Ranger wouldn't sit back on her ass and do nothing because she didn't want to work with her ex."

Kim scoffed, "You think that's what this is about? That my poor feeble heart just can't get over you? I broke up with you, remember?"

Tommy felt his throat tighten, "Yeah, I remember."

A look of horror crossed her face, "Oh God, Tommy, I'm sorry."

Clenching his jaw together, he shrugged trying not to let her see how much her words had hurt, "It's no big deal. As you said, it's been ten years. We've both moved on. I don't know you anymore." Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a business card and a pen. Scrawling a number on the back, he extended it to her. "Well, Ms. Thorton, I'm sorry for taking up your time."

Numbly she took the proffered card. "Tommy . . ."

He continued on as though he hadn't heard her, "However, my request still stands. Think it over. If you change your mind, my number's on the back."

"It's just really fast." She called after him as he walked away.

He turned. "I'm sorry, but I don't have a lot of time to give. It's the chance to do something important, Kim. The world doesn't work on your timetable."

"_You didn't enjoy it, did you?"_

"_No, I did. I did," she assured him and leaned her head against the window, so that she couldn't see his reflection. How could she explain it to Don? He'd done something with his life. When he was finally put in the ground, hundreds would come to pay their respects because he was a great man, a man to be remembered. He wouldn't get how deeply the play had reached inside, twisting things around. She sighed, "I just . . . it hit me, you know? This man went through life and at the end what had he accomplished, what had he done? Nothing."_

"_Kim . . . you don't think . . ."_

"_Don't I? I mean what have I really done? I've won a few medals, but five years from now no one will remember that." _And no one knows that I did the things I will be remembered for. _"And no one's going to stand at my grave, demanding the world's attention."_

"_I will." Moving to sit beside her on the window seat, he reached out a single finger to touch the back of her hand, "I will stand there and say 'Here lies a woman who brought a new day with her smile. Attention must be paid.'"_

_She stared down at his finger touching her hand, a tiny little part of them connected. He'd never touched her before, she realized, and her breath caught at the thought of what it meant now. Without her consciously willing it to, her hand turned palm up in offering. He met it, not grasping, not even twining his fingers in with hers, but simply laying his hand on hers. "Here is a woman who brought morning and woke me up. Attention must be paid."_

_He wasn't looking at her as he spoke, but staring directly ahead, as though he were just as afraid of what was happening as she. Wanting him to look at her, she reached over and touched his jaw, gently turning him to face her._

"_Thank you."_

"_You have more than my attention, Kim. You must know that."_

"_I do. I guess I have known for awhile . . ." she trailed off, dropping her eyes._

_He let out a sigh, and removed her hand from his cheek. "But?"_

"_But."_

"_Right." He stood abruptly and began to walk into the kitchen, then just as abruptly he turned. "Is it me? Is it that you can't feel anything for me?"_

"_No!" She scrambled up from the window seat and moved towards him, "No, I can. I mean I do . . . feel something for you . . . it's just . . ."_

_She reached for him, but he stepped back a pace. "There's someone else."_

"_In a way."_

"_Is it my son?"_

"_Kyle?"_

"_Yes, is it Kyle you're waiting for? I know you haven't really dated anyone since the two of you broke up. So . . . is it Kyle?"_

"_No," Kim shook her head sadly, biting back the tears, "no it's not Kyle. And I'm not _waiting_ for him, I'm just . . . I'm taking some time to leave him behind. Don't you see? It can't be you next. I need more time, more space, before I'm ready for this. Just give me some more time, okay?"_

_He looked away then, just past over her shoulder to their reflection in the window, and as she watched, Kim swore she could practically see him evaluating his options, mulling over her offer. Then his eyes slid back to hers, and he gave her his decision._

"_No."_

"_Don, please-" She stopped as he stepped not away but towards her, stepped so close she could feel the warmth of him, smell the cabernet and rosemary that still clung to his clothes from dinner. Gently, he cupped her face in both hands, and tilted her chin up, so that she was forced to look in his eyes._

"_When Joy died, I asked the world for more time, more space. Every year I convinced myself that I just needed one more year of saying goodbye before I was ready, but I never was, until one day I went to the Tin Cat to be alone with my space and my time and you came and sat down beside me, completely uninvited. Fifteen years of time and space, and all I needed was someone to demand something more of me. So no, I will not give you time or space. I am returning the favor, and demanding more."_

He'd kissed her then. He'd demanded more, and she'd found to her surprise that she was able to give it him, that she wanted to. Now, another man stood across from her wanting something she didn't think she could give, but maybe she needed to give it all the same. She ran her thumb along the cheap raised ink printing of his name.

No, the world did not work on her timetable, and perhaps that was all for the better.

"Tommy! Wait!"

- + - + - + - + - + -

"Here. Quad venti nonfat mocha with whip, extra-hot, compliments of B." Carl smiled encouragingly as he waived the proffered caffeine in his partner's face. When Rocky didn't look up, just continued to stare blankly at where the wall used be, but was now blocked by Carl, the older man sighed. "Geez, De Santos, you're beginning to make me question your sexuality, not to mention my own."

Still his partner made no response. Heaving another deep sigh, Carl shoved the cup into Rocky's hands, holding it there for a second to make sure Rocky wouldn't let it simply drop to the floor. When he was certain twenty fluid ounces of scalding hot milk, coffee, and chocolate wouldn't go flying, he sat down in the chair next to him.

"Come on, Bella made it herself and everything. She even opened up shop early for you. Don't get her pissed."

At the threat of angering the terribly imposing Bella LeMay, Rocky took a sip, wincing a little as the extra strong drink hit his palette. It did the trick though, shocking his system enough to let him return to human interaction. Finally looking over at his partner, he furrowed his brow in puzzlement. "Aren't you supposed to be asleep?"

"Well, I would be if my crazy partner hadn't taken it into his head to spend his time off in a hospital waiting room. But he did, so . . ." Carl stretched out his legs and slid down a little in his chair, "here I am. Want to tell me why?"

Rocky bent forward to rest his elbows on his knees and went back to staring at the wall. After a long pause he replied, "I know her or at least I did."

"The Fed?"

Rocky nodded.

"Shit."

Rocky nodded again. He honestly felt the word summed it all up rather aptly, and prayed that for once Carl would be a reductionist.

No such luck.

"Man," Carl shook his head. "I don't know how you did it. I mean, if I had gotten out and seen somebody I knew . . ."

"I didn't recognize her. It wasn't until the officer read out her name that I knew who she was." He could hear his voice, hollow, flat, but it felt like he was speaking for someone else, that these were just words flowing through him, because he honestly felt . . . nothing. He didn't know the woman lying in the ICU. He didn't feel anything about the fact that she was lying there, at least not anymore than he did for any other patient. Except he felt that he should feel something, Trini had been a Ranger, and that meant this should impact him more, mean more. It was that feeling that had kept him rooted to this chair, staring at that wall, trying to work up some kind of emotion.

"So what is she, an ex? A long lost love? One night stand?"

"A friend."

"Pity. Your credit would have jumped if you told me you'd tapped that."

Rocky managed a smile at that. Probably plenty of people would have found it crass, but those people weren't paramedics, or cops, or any of the other numerous in-the-thick-of-it professionals who developed inappropriate humor as a shield. Trini was a Fed. She'd understand.

"So how's she doing?"

He shrugged. "I'm not family."

"Well, has her family been called? We can talk to them."

"Haven't seen any."

"Superior? Partner? Tight-assed medical resident boyfriend?" Rocky shook his head as Carl ticked the possibilities off on his fingers. "So basically, what she's got is us."

"Yup."

"Damn. And I thought your life sucked."

"Yup." They sat for a minute, contemplating that revelation.

Suddenly, Carl sat up and clapped Rocky on the shoulder. "Hang on."

Turning his head slightly, Rocky watched in puzzlement as Carl wandered over to the nurses station, wondering what the man possibly thought he was going to get out of those women. Then one of the nurses picked up the phone and made a call. Two minutes later a petite black woman in a janitor's uniform came down the hall looking royally pissed. The moment she saw Carl, however, her face lit up, and she let herself be drawn into the stairwell with minimum protest.

They weren't gone for more than three minutes, but when Carl came back his entire demeanor had changed. He looked troubled. Sitting down on the other side of Rocky this time, so that his bulk blocked the view from the nurses' station, he hissed, "How good a friend is this chick?"

Rocky made a split-second decision. He could tell from the look Carl was giving him that something was terribly wrong. Even if he couldn't muster emotion for a fellow Ranger, he owed them loyalty. "Good. She was a very good friend. Why? Carl what's up?"

"What's up is she's not supposed to be here."

"What do you mean she's not supposed to be here?"

"I mean she's not supposed to be in Houston. LaChelle overheard the cops talking to the nurses, while she was cleaning the hallway. This woman is a Quantico Fed, top-level criminalist. She's supposed to be in the Bahamas on a week's vacation. Instead she's here, in Houston, shot in a hotel parking lot not less than a mile from NASA. That does not earn you hugs and kisses from your superiors. What it does earn you is a guard by your door and the words disciplinary hearing."

"But she's okay, right?"

"Geez DeSantos use your head. Of course she's not okay. She's rogue."

Carl watched as Rocky digested the information, and then said, "This is the part where we get up and go back to our beds and get some sleep because this doesn't concern us, right?"

Rock shook his head.

Carl sighed, "Yeah, I didn't think so."

- + - + - + - + - + -

Kim glanced around the terribly normal looking entryway in puzzlement. When Tommy had said he wanted show her the information, she thought he'd take her to his office. She'd pictured guards and swipe cards, and maybe even the occasional biometric, not a slightly dilapidated arts and crafts style home with too little furniture and the smell of old pizza.

Still, they'd protected the world at seventeen, appearances weren't everything. Putting her growing doubts aside, she started to follow Tommy into the living room, when the sound of footsteps echoed above her.

"Good, you're home." A voice called out from above, and a second later, someone started coming down the stairs, at a rapid hop-step.

The voice was decidedly female, and the body that went with it was equally so. Clad in boxers and a sports bra, she left no questions on that front. Even though she was still on the stairs, Kim could tell that she would tower over her and probably see eye to eye with Tommy with less than an inch of heel. All curves and muscle, she was what Kim's mother would have called Rubenesque, if she was being kind, 'sturdy' if she wasn't. With her broad shoulders and thick legs, the word that came to Kim's mind was Amazon.

The woman continued to talk as she made her way down, still looking at the stack of papers in her hands. "I am telling you Oliver, the things you are going to want to do to my body when you see what I got ahold of. I am talking serious multiple-orgasm quality shit."

Tommy coughed theatrically at her words, and she stopped, finally looking up. Her eyes fell on Kim and she blinked. Shoving her glasses up into her mane of orange-red hair as though that would help her see better, she looked from Tommy to Kim and then back again.

"Umm, Kim this is Joe, my partner. Joe this is Kim . . ."

"Your ex-girlfriend," Joe completed the thought, still looking at Tommy, "I know who she is. What I don't know is what the hell she's doing here."

At the moment, Kim thought it was a pretty valid question.

- + - + - + - + - + -

Kat never heard him.

He was behind her the second she rounded Jason's building to take the shortcut through the yards of the larger town-homes. Hand snaking up to close over her mouth, he drug her back into the shadows between the homes.

She started to scream, but it transformed into a howl of pain as his other hand closed over her left wrist and twisted it up behind her back, just far enough to get her attention. Still, she thought, somebody must have heard. Jason must have heard.

As though he'd had the same thought, her attacker pulled her flush against him and backed them both against the side of the building, between two well trimmed bushes. As he did so she could feel the elbow of his right arm dig into her chest, pinning her more securely. Still his right hand never left her mouth.

Desperate not to let him gain any more control, Kat bit down on his hand.

For a second she felt triumphant, as her teeth tore through skin, and she had the fleeting impression of salt-water against her lips as though he'd just stepped out of the ocean. But her attacker didn't flinch, didn't let up one iota, if anything his grip on her mouth tightened, almost as though he were determined to force feed her prize to her. The saltwater was overcome by a metallic tang as his blood flooded into her mouth.

"Kat stop fighting!" The command rasped against her ear, reinforced by her left arm being twisted up just a little further.

At his use of her name, her blood went cold. This wasn't some random attack. He'd calculated this, lain in wait. Almost as though her body couldn't handle the thought, she began to gag, her body retching in an effort to rid itself of his blood, because she couldn't have any piece of him inside.

Incongruously, he bent her forward with his body, and loosened his grip on her mouth, whispering as he did so, "If you scream, I will have to silence you quickly. It will be unpleasant."

She couldn't have screamed. She couldn't get enough air. He moved his hand away a little further, so that it cupped before her in a bowl. "Spit."

She did as she was told, giving back what she'd taken from him and a little piece of herself as well.

"Good. Again."

Again she followed the instructions, coughing and spitting and retching until she was no longer aspirating blood. Seemingly satisfied that she at least wasn't go to die off schedule, he flicked the blood and saliva off his hand and jerked her back up by her left arm.

Even as he did so, Kat realized he'd made a mistake and left the right side of her body free. With great grunt of effort, she brought her right elbow back to smash into his gut.

Too fast for her, he shifted his hip, so that she met bone rather than flesh. White light flashed behind her eyes, as her elbow cracked against the solid mass. The next thing she knew, he'd brought his foot up to meet the back of her knees, forcing her to the ground. With his free hand, he folded her over, shoving her down by the nape of her neck so that her nose was mere inches from the grass, and she could feel the residue of spit and blood against her skin.

"Keep breathing, we'll do this quickly." There was a soft thunk of something dropping beside her. "Kat turn your head."

It was such a little thing, and she didn't want to be hurt anymore.

She turned her head.

There, not more than four inches away, lay a communicator.

"You're not going to find me." He said the words almost conversationally, and for the first time tonight she recognized the voice.

"Billy?" At the name, his grip on her neck softened, and then he released her.

She made to lift her head, but his fingers came to rest against her cheek. "No."

The implicit threat belied the gentleness of his voice and touch, and she kept her head down. He knelt beside her, but with the light at his back all she could make out in her peripheral vision was the dark outline.

"You're not going to find me." He repeated, his fingers still on her cheek. "When you go out with Jason tomorrow you will go anywhere you want, everywhere but around The Pit. If he insists on going to area around The Pit, you'll look, but you won't see me. Do you understand?"

"No." She croaked, "No, I don't understand. We're your friends, why won't you let us help you?"

He sighed, so deeply she could almost feel it in the fingers resting on her cheek. "You assume there's something left to help. I've just demonstrated there's not." He got up. "I don't want to repeat this with Jason. He wouldn't surrender as easily. Do you understand?"

She nodded. What else was she supposed to do?

"Good. I hope we never run into each other again." And with that he walked away.

She lay there in the dirt and the grass, straining her ears to hear him leave, praying he'd leave, but the grass muffled his steps, making it impossible to tell if he'd truly gone. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she inched her hand towards the communicator that still lay in the grass, half expecting a heel to slam into her wrist with every inch. When it didn't come, she wrapped her fingers around the cool metal and cried.

- + - + - + - + - + -

Comments and Criticisms welcomed and appreciated as always.

Panache.


	3. The Proper Care and Feeding of Joe Riley

_Disclaimer: It's someone else's sandbox. I just play here because other people have all the best toys._

_Author's note: I owe this part to so many people it's not even funny. So here we go, I need to thank CrazyGirl who read this part for characterizations, to asdeed who kept me company and helped me work out scene order and structure, and finally to Dagmar who has read and worked with me on so may versions of this part (even the really crappy ones) she should get friggin authorship credit._

- + - + - + - + - + -

"What we need is a plan," Rocky stated with conviction, pressing his palms flat on the table.

Leaning back in his chair, Carl gave him, one his patented 'I'm willing to hear you out, but you know you're still getting grounded, right?' looks. Finding they worked just as well on him as they did on the four young LeMays, Rocky turned and looked over at Bella who was gathering up their cups.

"Uh-uh," Carl's wife shook her head and wiped down they're table, "I am not here. I do not hear any of this. And _you_," she pointed a finger at her husband, "You know I'm going to kill you for calling my sister at one in the morning and dragging me out here, right?"

Rocky's head was still spinning at that. Not that Bella had come when her husband had called, but that Carl had called at all. There was absolutely no reason for either of them to be here and yet here they were, sitting in an empty Starbucks, courtesy of Bella, plotting a daring . . . something. Well he and Carl were plotting, Bella was supplying the refreshments. It was, in a way, disturbingly cozy, all very family-oriented. But that was Carl and Bella for you. Things were simple to them, family and friends, that's what mattered, that's what had value. He got it though. After all, if Carl had called with a problem of dubious legality, he'd have been the first one there.

Carl grabbed Bella's hand and kissed it; then smacking her lightly on the ass, he pointed to the counter in mock dismissal. "Woman. I am planning."

"Mmhmm. Planning. Lord, what that poor woman needs is James Bond and she's got the Keystone cops."

Rocky groaned and dropped his head to his hands. "She's right. What I am talking about, a plan? There are cops at her door. She's a dangerous, rogue FBI agent with cops at her door, and I'm a fucking paramedic."

"Language!" Bella called out from behind the bakery case.

"I'm a paramedic with a partner with kids. You should be home." He stood up abruptly. "You both should be home. I- I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."

A brief fit of strung-out laughter over-took him. Dear God, what _had_ come over him? He was just a man, a low-end of the totem pole, blue-collar schlub with no college education. What on earth made him think he was supposed to . . . what? Rescue her? He didn't even know whether she should be rescued.

_Smack _Rocky's head snapped to the right as a hand slapped him hard across the left side of his face. Looking down at Bella, he gingerly touched the stinging flesh of his cheek. "Ow."

Drawing herself up to all four-foot, eleven inches of her height, she stabbed her index finger into his chest. "You told me this woman was a friend. Right?"

When Rocky didn't respond, she poked him again. "Right?"

He nodded.

"And you don't believe she'd do whatever they're thinking she did without a good reason. Right?"

He found his voice this time. "No. Not Trini."

"Well then. You need a plan." Then nodding as though that closed the issue, once and for all, she spun on her heel and walked back to the counter.

Rocky blinked and looked at Carl, who just shrugged. "Guess we need a plan."

- + - + - + - + - + -

"I know who she is. What I don't know is what the hell she's doing here."

Joe's words hung in the silence like the peal of a bell, reverberating long after they were spoken, and no one could speak until finally the noise died down.

Tommy sighed as yet another uncomfortable silence descended. What was this, the third, fourth of the night? Really, he was starting to lose count. He hadn't quite intended for the two women to meet in precisely this fashion, truthfully he'd thought Joe wouldn't be back until sometime tomorrow. But here she was . . . being Joe.

Both women looked at him in a silent demand for explanation. He could feel Kim's wide-eyed stare of surprise and what he'd almost call hurt if she hadn't made it so damn clear that he wasn't in any position to hurt her. For her part, Joe crossed her arms and quirked an eyebrow in what came as close to waiting patiently for her as possible.

He looked back, as calmly as he could manage, which granted wasn't all that calmly, given that he was furious at her for this ridiculous little power-play, but in a studied, unhurried way that, if Joe was thinking rationally, would indicate she wasn't going to get to continue this little drama her way.

After a moment it seemed to sink in. Taking the last few steps in a slow, deliberate movement, that was somehow both insolent and resigned, Joe extended the stack of papers out to him. "There's some interesting stuff in there. When you have a moment . . ." her voice lingered on the word, infusing it with disapproval of why it might be awhile before he did have that moment. "I'll be in the other room."

The not-quite civility, the contrived formality of the whole interaction was somehow a more ringing condemnation, than any yelling or cursing Joe could muster, which could be pretty impressive when she put her mind to it. He'd hurt her, betrayed her by bringing Kim back like this, at a time when they both knew he had fully expected her to be elsewhere. There'd been a tightness in Joe's lips and a blankness in her eyes that he hadn't seen in a long time, like he'd reached back inside her and flipped her switch, that little switch that changed her from the bawdy, vivacious woman with a big laugh and a tendency towards random acts of kindness he'd been with for the past two years, back to the walled-off, insecure machine he'd had foisted upon him three years ago.

He didn't want Kim near that woman. After all the first time he'd met that woman, she'd broken a Staff-Sergeant's nose with a pool cue, and he didn't think she had any of his qualms about hurting a woman.

He'd always liked Kim's nose.

"_Hey!" Tommy leapt off the bar stool and was across the room in a flash. Granted, the guy had been an ass, but the feisty redhead hadn't seemed to mind too much, matching him drink for drink, trading insult for insult, and certainly more than comfortable taking his money. Then the Staff Sergeant had bent over her as she lined up a shot and the next thing anybody knew she'd whipped around to smash the back-end of her cue into his face._

_Interposing himself between her and the guy whose nose had been reduced to a pulpy mess, he strong-armed the pool cue out of her hands. "That's enough."_

_She just glared at him, her breath coming out in harsh gasps. For a split second he thought she might try to take the cue back, but then she held her hands up in a half-hearted surrender and stepped back, grabbing her beer off the side of the pool table._

_Squatting to the floor, Tommy tossed a handful of paper napkins at the asshole who was trying to stem the blood, to no avail, and looked at him in disgust. "What the hell did you say to her?"_

"_Nothin', man, I didn't say nothin' to that crazy bitch."_

_He heard her move and whipped the pool cue out so that it smacked lightly at her thighs, restraining her. Looking up, he snapped, "I will handle this."_

"_Who the hell are you?"_

"_I'm an officer who outranks you, and is telling you to stand down."_

"_Well then." She gave him an insolent, half-hearted salute, "Yes, sir. Very good, sir."_

_Once he was sure the girl wasn't coming back, he helped the man to a sitting position and stood. "Lean forward. You don't want to start swallowing the blood."_

Running a hand over his face, he turned to Kim, who was still looking at him in shock. "I am _really_ sorry about that."

She gave him a tight, ironic smile in response. "I take it I'm not supposed to be here?"

"Joe has a tendency to believe the worst in people. It's really not you."

Kim pressed her lips together and looked down at her hands. Following her gaze, he watched as she twisted her wedding ring in what was obviously an old habit, and he wondered whether it had started because she couldn't get used to it or she liked to reassure herself it was real. Finally she looked back up. "Are you sure? That it's not me?"

There were too many layers to the question, too many pitfalls, and he wasn't sure what she wanted the answer to be, wasn't even sure she knew what she wanted the answer to be.

In the end the delay in his response wound up being an answer in itself. Her face changed, abruptly, completely, as though she'd awoken from a pleasant dream to discover that she had been sleepwalking. Eyes darting everywhere that wasn't him, she stammered. "This was a mistake. I- I should go."

"No." His hand closed over her bicep in firm restraint, and he wondered if he'd ever get to touch Kim in something other than protest again. Then, because that wasn't a question he should even be asking, he flexed his hand, releasing her. "No. You shouldn't go."

"I don't think I can do this, Tommy."

"Because of Joe? Or because of me?"

She shrugged. "Maybe."

He was too tired to do this. Too tired to convince her it wouldn't be a big deal, or it wouldn't matter. If she wasn't in, better to find out now. Sighing he sat on the steps and gestured to the doorway. "Fine. Go."

"Tommy . . . I-" She started to make some false apology and stopped. He thanked her for that.

Resting elbows on knees, he clasped his hands in front of him, and looked at her, locked onto her gaze and laid all his cards on the table. "I'm sorry for not providing you with some sort of warning about Joe. Earlier I was afraid you'd bolt, and I thought she wouldn't be back until tomorrow, so I'd have all night to bring it up. We've been together in one way or another since we left the army. If you do this, you will have to work with her. She's difficult and infuriating, but she's also my right hand. I'd trust her with anything. I'll talk to her, but she probably won't tone it down all that much. If that's going to be a problem . . ."

He trailed off, not wanting to spell it out completely, but the meaning was implicit all the same. _If that's going to be a problem, the door's to your left._ Kim got the message. For some reason the ultimatum calmed her, as though now that she knew her place in the pecking order, where the two of them stood, she could function around him. Smiling, she came to sit beside him on the steps.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised. After all, I got married. I don't know why I didn't think you'd dated anyone since Kat."

Tommy winced at the word 'dated'. He didn't think he'd ever taken Joe on a date, wasn't entirely sure what she'd do if he tried. Kim saw it and frowned.

"I'm sorry. Did I misinterpret-? When you said you'd been with her . . ."

He looked down at his hands. "Joe and I . . . we're complicated."

"Mm, I guess I don't get to ask complicated how?"

His lips twisted in a sardonic smile. "You want to tell me about your marriage?"

She smiled back. "It was . . . complicated."

As the companionable, bittersweet moment washed over them, Tommy felt something loosen inside him. The tight ache of resentment that had been a permanent part of his being ever since he received her letter uncoiled, spooling out into simple hurt, painful, but clean. They could do this, could be a part of each other's lives in this way.

Somehow reading his thoughts, Kim turned and asked, "Do I get to know how you met?"

"_What do you mean, I've been reassigned?"_

"_I mean as of today you've been reassigned, you're taking over the counseling and handling of these three operatives."_

"_Operatives? Look, sir, with all due respect, my training is in group psychology, not clinical. I didn't put in for this transfer. How did my name even come up for this?"_

_Major Jirah clasped his hands in front of him and pressed his lips together. Then he fixed Tommy with a frank look. "Oliver, I'm going to be candid with you. Nothing I say leaves this room."_

"_Absolutely, sir."_

"_You're not being reassigned to handle three operatives. You're being assigned to handle one. This one in particular. The others are window-dressing."_

_Tommy picked up the folder his commanding officer slid across the desk and flipped it open. There, staring back up at him, was the picture of the redhead from the bar. He looked up in surprise._

"_She requested you, specifically. Apparently, you made quite an impression at some point."_

_He ground his teeth in irritation, but remained silent._

_Jirah smiled. "Apparently, she made quite an impression as well."_

_Briefly, Tommy flipped through the extraordinarily colorful record. The words "unstable", "hothead" and "insubordinate" seemed to be recurring themes in her evaluations. He sighed. This was a shit assignment, the kind that broke careers._

"_I don't understand. How-? How does Private First Class-" he glanced down at the name, "Joe Riley have enough clout to get her pick of baby-sitters?"_

"_You obviously don't visit the rifle range in the mornings."_

"_No, sir, I usually go in the evenings. Why?"_

"_Because you wouldn't be asking that question if you'd ever seen her shoot."_

Tommy shook his head. "No, you don't. Sorry."

"Let me guess. It's complicated?"

He laughed. It felt easy and natural. "Something like that."

Turning a little, Kim rested her head on her palm and looked at him. "I should have invited you to my wedding."

To others it might have seemed like a non-sequitur, but somehow, even after ten years, he got what she was saying. "Yeah, well . . . I probably wouldn't have come anyway."

She grinned. "It's okay. I wouldn't have come to yours either."

It was amazing and exactly the opposite of what he'd expected, but somehow Joe's existence seemed to free them both. Because it drew this line the sand, imposed the boundaries, they weren't left dancing around the big question. "We were never really friends, were we?"

Her smile softened into something very like regret. "No. Not really." Then the corners of her mouth dropped just a little further, as something seemed to slide into place. "And we're not going to be are we? After all this . . ."

Tommy fiddled with his glasses. "No, probably not. I don't exactly keep in touch."

Reaching up, Kim touched his hand, a brief, feather-light brush of fingers. "Okay."

He looked over at her in surprise.

"It's okay. We'll just . . . do this. And then you'll go back to your life, and I'll go back to mine."

He wanted to tell her that it didn't have to be this way, that he'd write or call or they could get together for a cup of coffee, but he thought of Joe, of the past two years bouncing from Fort Benning to New York City to Boston to that town outside Denver to here. He stood. "I'll get you started looking through what we've got."

- + - + - + - + -

"We could take them coffee and drug it" Rocky offered in desperation. They'd been through nearly twenty scenarios each becoming more implausible than the last.

"I think they might notice two cops slumped over in their seats. Look-" Carl leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. "First thing we gotta know is what we're trying to do."

"I told you. I don't know what I'm doing."

"No, I mean . . . are we planning on taking this girl out of the hospital? Cause I gotta tell you, with a gunshot wound . . . I don't think that's a good idea."

"I _just_ . . ." Rocky sighed, "I need to talk to her."

"She might not even be conscious yet. And if she is . . . they're probably pumping her full of morphine. Who knows how coherent she'll be."

For some reason, his mind suddenly flashed to one of the few conversations he'd had with Billy after his predecessor stepped down, to Billy telling him softly about how strong Trini was, how focused. Now, he couldn't even remember how or why the subject had come up, but suddenly he could see the conviction in Billy's face with perfect clarity. Trini Kwan could move mountains if she wanted to.

"If she's conscious, she'll push through the morphine." He spoke decisively, giving voice to another man's belief.

Carl leaned back and ran a hand over his jaw. "Well, getting you in will certainly be easier than getting her out."

"I just need to be someone the cops won't notice, like LaChelle."

"That's actually not a half-bad idea. I bet she could get you a janitor's uniform, too."

"Yeah, but that won't actually get me into the room, and I need to get in the room." It was becoming like a mantra in his head. _In the room. Just get in the room. Enlightenment lies in the room._

"What about an orderly? That's like . . . what? One step up from janitor? When was the last time anyone looked at an orderly?"

Rocky nodded as Carl said the words. An orderly was good. They were like hospital ants, hundreds of nameless faces crawling around doing scut work. He'd bet they'd barely look at his badge. Then something else occurred to him and he groaned, "They're gonna come in aren't they? Even if I manage to convince them I belong, they'll just follow me in and watch the whole time."

Carl frowned, and Rocky knew he'd hit upon a small hitch neither one of them had thought of before.

"So what if they do?" Bella piped up from behind the counter where she'd been checking the milk.

Rocky spluttered, "I could get arrested is what!"

"Not if you do your job. Just go in. If they follow you, do whatever you told them you were going to do and leave. If they don't . . . you're where you want to be."

Startled by the elegant simplicity of it all, Rocky glanced over at Carl to see if he found a flaw in the scenario, but his partner was nodding in approval, a slow smile spreading across his face.

Rocky couldn't help but grin back as he whispered conspiratorially, "Dude, your wife is a criminal mastermind."

"And she's hot, too."

- + - + - + - + -

Joe sat on the arm of the couch and watched in the mirror as Oliver reached for Kim's arm, told her not to go. Dammit, she was going to stay. The petite brunette might not know it yet, but Joe did. When he put his mind to it, Oliver could get almost anyone to do almost anything. It was his particular talent, made all the more powerful because for the most part he did it nearly unconsciously.

Yes, there was that nice faltering expression, as the girl's resolve crumbled, just a little. Not much longer now.

Disgusted, Joe shoved off the couch and made her way to the kitchen. Just because she knew how this was going to play out didn't mean she had to watch, or at least not without reinforcements.

Alcohol was really the type of thing called for at a time like this. Lots and lots of vodka, or whiskey, or at the very least beer. With a growl of frustration at her own restraint, she grabbed a pint of cookie-dough ice-cream out of the freezer and a spoon from the drying rack. Hopping onto the counter, she began to rhythmically bang her heels against the cabinets like a petulant child.

She'd made a pretty good dent in both the ice cream and the cabinets by the time he appeared.

"You're putting our security deposit in danger."

Looking up, she shoved another spoonful of ice-cream into her mouth and proceeded to ram her heels back with even greater force, ignoring the fact that they were starting to bruise. Oliver smiled and stepped into the kitchen. When she swung her right leg out for a particularly ferocious kick, he caught her ankle.

For a second she struggled, trying to twist free, but his hand held firm, biting into her skin in a way that would probably leave a mark. He'd never touch the pixie like this, and that should probably make it worse, make it hurt that she wasn't the type of woman who inspired kind touches and soft caresses, especially in a man who was so obviously built for exactly that. The romantic in Oliver, the man she'd seen take women on secluded outdoor picnics and who still kept letters from old girlfriends, that man lay dormant around her. Instead, she inspired power and fight and some kind of deep-seated need for control. Sometimes she thought he hated her for that, just a little. But it was something, some piece of him she could claim, a piece to hold onto.

She relaxed her muscles, giving way, and held out a spoonful of ice-cream. Taking the act of contrition for what it was Oliver stepped forward, running his hand up her calf, and allowed her to feed him. The tiny, intimate moment was uncommon for them, and she savored it, even as she recognized the apology in the gesture, in his unbending just enough from his strict avoidance of saturated fats to accept the morsel.

It was as close as either of them ever got to saying 'I'm sorry' and meaning it.

And she was sorry . . . kind of. Not for her reaction, he'd deserved that, but because her outburst might have endangered the plan. She needed more ice-cream to smother that before she told him.

Oliver watched as she dug back into the carton and frowned. "Are you really going to eat the whole thing?"

"Is your girlfriend still standing in our entry-way?"

"No."

Joe looked up in surprise. _No way you failed._

"She's now sitting on the couch looking over your notes."

_Bastard_. Scowling, she shoveled another spoonful into her mouth, and asked, "Then what do you think?"

He sighed. "We did talk about this."

"No," she corrected, gesticulating with her spoon for emphasis, "You talked. I listened. You made a decision, and I agreed to follow orders like the good little soldier I am."

Oliver actually smirked at that. "Since when have you ever been a good little soldier?"

"I have my moments." She leaned back a little, bracing her hands behind her so that he had a good view of her body and ran the heel of her left foot up the back of his leg.

To her dismay, he tensed, not much, but enough that she noticed, and it wasn't the kind of tensing she'd been going for. Frowning, she let her leg drop away, and looked up at him frankly. "I didn't promise to be nice to Tinkerbell."

His hand flexed against her other leg, in the way it did when he had to prevent his grip from tightening too much.

It riled her, that something she'd said had gotten under the skin of the unflappable Lieutenant Thomas Oliver, so quickly and so completely, and all because it involved the woman in the next room. So, of course, she said it again. "You want me to work with the pixie, fine, but we're not going to paint each other's toenails."

He released her and stepped back. "She has a name."

"I am well aware of her fucking name," Joe hissed, leaning forward in challenge as the rage she'd worked so hard to control finally got the better of her. "So should I call her Ms. Thorton? Very old-fashioned of her not to hyphenate, but what really intrigues me is why did she keep the old guy's name after the divorce?"

"She built a career as Kim Thorton."

"She was famous as the pan-global winning gymnast Kimberly Hart first," Joe shot back. _See, I know the file just a well as you do. _"Maybe she still has feelings for her ex. I mean, come on, no divorce is that civil. I don't care how good the prenup was."

Oliver's hands came up so fast, so sharply, that for the space of a breath, Joe wondered if she'd finally pushed to him too far, forced him to break his cardinal rule, and she tensed the muscles of her neck in anticipation of the blow. But then he grabbed her face. Long fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck, thumbs pressing against her temples, he trapped her. Titling her face up, he rasped, "Why are you doing this, Joe?"

She would have closed her eyes, would have lied or given him a snappy comeback, but she'd long ago learned that Oliver never asked a question of her that he didn't want the answer to, and he was prepared to do whatever he had to to get it.

"_You know, I'm pretty sure this isn't part of the army-approved counseling method."_

_Tommy didn't respond, just slid another beer her way, watching as she opened it against the table's edge in one practiced motion. She was on number six. He was still nursing the start of his third, which he wouldn't finish. That was fine. He'd bet she'd lost track by now._

_Resting one elbow on her bent knee so that the beer dangled loosely from her hand, she leaned back against the wall and looked at him. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to get me drunk."_

"_I am."_

"_Well, shit, that's honest!" She sounded positively delighted. "So are you planning to take advantage of me?"_

"_In a way."_

"_Well." she swung her leg off the bench, set down the bottle, and leaned across the table, providing him a rather good view of her generous cleavage. "What are you waiting for?"_

_Tommy took a sip of his beer. "What did that guy say to you that set you off?"_

_For a second, she just stared at him. Then she broke into a drunken grin, which devolved into fit of laughter. "You really think I'm that drunk? That I'm going to fall for—what?—psychology via alcohol?"_

_Tommy shrugged. "Honestly, it doesn't make much difference to me. I didn't want this job, and three months from now when they ask for your evaluation, I'll have no problem putting down that you're an unstable, overly-aggressive, manic depressive with a death wish. That will be—what is it now?—your fifth poor evaluation in a little over a year and a half. They won't be that forgiving, even for you."_

"_You wouldn't."_

"_They'll take away your gun."_

_That got her, as he knew it would. In the last three weeks he'd spent watching her that had been about as far as he was able to crack. Joe didn't feel like she was worth anything without her gun, but he didn't know why. From her entrance tests and initial training, everything pointed to the fact that she was, in a word, brilliant, both on and off the field. Still, take the gun out of Joe's hands and it was almost as though she went out of her to way to prove that she was a barely-functioning idiot-savant. Which led to tonight's little escapade, because so far she'd been feeding him nothing but bullshit during their sessions._

_Flopping back against the bench, she slumped down so far that he could feel her thighs brush against his calves. "So why the alcohol? Why not just make your little Machiavellian power play during a session? Same effect."_

"_Because I'd like at least one honest answer from you before the night's out, and I'm willing to pump you full of beer to get it."_

"_I'll just stop drinking."_

"_No. You won't."_

"_And what makes you so sure?"_

"_Because I've been coming here and watching you on your off days. Your relationship with alcohol only has two modes—off and on. You're not an alcoholic, not yet. You couldn't shoot the way you do if you were, but you're damn close. Far as I can tell, you're a binge drinker who's just waiting for a trigger to make the leap to full scale alcoholism. And then they'll take your gun away. Either way I won't have to do this for very long."_

"_You flunked all your ethics courses, didn't you?"_

"_Passed with flying colors. Even won an award. Why did you request me?"_

_She scowled. "Because I thought you'd suck at this."_

_He slid the rest of his beer across the table. "Keep drinking."_

"_What is it you want from me?" _

"_I told you. One honest answer, and hopefully, for you not to pass out before I get it."_

"_Just one, huh?" She fingered the neck of the bottle, and then looked up, "Three questions."_

"_What?"_

"_Ask me three questions. I'll give you an honest answer to one of them. And they've got to be new questions."_

_It was Tommy's turn to sit back. There was no reason to trust that she'd give him an honest answer to any of them, but then he really didn't have anything to lose. He nodded. "Okay." He ticked the questions off on his fingers. "What was the first fight you got into? Who taught you to shoot? Why the army?"_

_After a moment she downed the rest of his too-warm beer. Setting it back down on the table, she looked straight at him. "When I was ten, I lived with my brother at my aunt's. There was this stream out back, with this whole grouping of rocks right in the middle. Anyway, one day my cousin and my brother got in an argument over who was king of the rocks. My cousin pushed my brother off the largest rock, and he just fell back . . ." She pushed at the neck of the bottle so that it tipped over in imitation of the described event. "Well, let's just say the bottle fared better. So there's my brother lying in the stream, not moving. I launch myself at my cousin and start hitting her. Someone must have pulled me off because I don't remember stopping. She was seven."_

_Joe's face hadn't changed during the entire story. Tommy struggled to keep his equally impassive. He wanted to ask where her brother was, what happened to her cousin, but he had a feeling those would count as extra questions._

"_Okay, who taught me to shoot."_

_He started to protest, but she held up her hand. "One honest answer and two lies. That's what you get. I leave it to you to figure out which is which. So, the shooting was my boyfriend's father when I was thirteen. I wanted a dad, and he wanted a son. We matched up very well. I have no idea what happened to Ethan, but the old man and I still go out hunting every year." Her mouth curved up in tiny secret smile and something about it made him want to find that old man and beat him to a pulp. "He's also the one who taught me to drink. You get that for free."_

"_And the army?"_

"_That's easy. I wanted to leave home. The army got me out."_

Oh, she wanted to go back to the time when she could feed him lies, give him any number of reasons that didn't include the truth, but getting him to believe a lie had gotten harder, so instead she just looked straight back at him, and challenged, "Why do you think?"

"Because she's not supposed to be here." He answered in frank apology. His thumbs were stroking her temples now, in the rhythmic, gentle brushes he used to calm her, help her focus. Of course, it was usually right before she went out to kill someone, so the tenderness got lost somewhere along the road. Still it did the trick, and she found herself breathing in time with his movements. Oliver continued to talk, continued to walk her through the paces, outline the plans with clinical efficiency, helping her visualize how this would all play out, the way he used to, running over a mission until she knew every curve of a road, every rock on a roof-top before she ever got there.

"It's three weeks, tops. We work over details with her, until she knows the kind of questions we need answers to and who needs to be asked. She goes out and does what any wealthy divorcee, rising star reporter, does when coming to a new town—circulate with the glitterati, get the info she can, then makes the appropriate introductions for whichever one of us is needed to complete the job."

"Three weeks, tops." Joe murmured, repeating his words, already visualizing the moment when they'd say goodbye. It was a good moment, so she replayed it a couple of times.

"That's it, Riley."

At the name what he was doing hit her like a ton of bricks, and she jerked out of his grasp. "No! No. You don't get to handle me into this . . . this complacency!"

She shoved him back and hopped off the counter, ready to go lay the whole sordid situation out for Ms. Wealthy Divorcee herself, see how much she liked it.

Oliver grabbed her bicep. "I'm not handling you."

But he couldn't look at her as he said it. She wrenched her arm out of his grasp and snarled, "If I don't get to lie, then neither do you."

She only made it a few more paces before strong hands grabbed her by the shoulders. Wrapping her in great bear hug, he whispered softly against her ear. "Fine. I _am_ handling you. I am also handling my ex-girlfriend, who doesn't even know she's being handled. You tell me which is more unfair. I will use every person I have to, if it means getting this done, but at the end of all this it will still be you and me. Is that what you need to hear? That it's still going to be the two of us?"

Dumbly, she nodded.

Spinning her around, he looked her straight in the eyes. "It will still be us. Just us. I promise you."

And the miracle was he believed it. He actually believed he'd walk away from any second chance with Kimberly Hart that might present itself, to continue on with her in this fucked-up non-relationship. She just wished she believed it too.

"What can I do to convince you?"

"Kiss me." The words were out of her mouth before she could think about it, but as soon as they were, she wanted it more than anything, wanted him kissing her, here and now, knowing that the competition was in the next room.

He blinked, and her heart dropped to her stomach.

"You can't do it can you? Not with her in the next room, knowing she might--"

Slamming her up against the kitchen wall, he cut off the taunt, mouth closing over hers in ferocious determination. He kissed her and kissed her, hands tangling in her curls, body trapping her in place. He ran through the gamut of their experiences together, hot, sharp kisses that made a hundred moments of longing coalesce into one, slowing to lazy, sensual ones that turned her inside out.

Finally, he pulled away, but not before he whispered once again. "You and me at the end."

The words should have reassured her. Hell, everything about what had just happened should have, but it didn't. It made her feel dirty, like she'd trapped him into that kiss, and suddenly she wondered if she'd trapped him into becoming the man who believed he'd wind up with her in the end.

Oh God, she needed to get out here.

"I'm going for a run."

- + - + - + - + -

Kat leaned forward and braced her hands against the shower wall, letting the hot, needle-like drops pelt her back. She'd turned up the temperature too far, and the water was coming perilously close to scalding her skin, but she just couldn't bring herself to care.

Tears mingled with the water, slow at first, just trailing little rivulets down her face, so gentle that she hadn't even noticed they'd come. But then the salt water made it to her lips, and at the taste of her own tears on her tongue, she lost it. Great, heaving, angry sobs wracked through her over and over, almost as though her body was determined to finish what Billy . . .

At the thought of his name, she wrenched open the shower curtain, and bent her head over the toilet, ignoring the water now streaming out onto her bathroom floor.

She'd already thrown up. Twice. Once in the bushes as she'd stumbled home and the other in the toilet, which had necessitated a mad dash the moment she got in the door. But apparently that wasn't enough, wasn't enough to rid herself of what had happened. Sinking slowly to her knees, she reached out blindly and turned the knob on the shower, finally shutting it off.

Only then did she hear the phone ringing.

_Go the hell away._

Resting her cheek on the cool porcelain edge of her bathtub, she counted the rings, counted the moments 'til she was alone again, 'til she was free. _That's two._ If she got up she'd have to face that this was the world, and it was real. _Three._ She could just lie here. If she lay here until tomorrow morning, if she didn't pick up the phone, none of this happened. _Four. _The answering machine clicked on, and she breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't real. None of it happened.

"Dammit, Kat! Where the hell are you?!" Jason's tense, worried voice blasted through the speakers on the answering machine, intruding on her peaceful fantasy. _Go away. You're not real._

"I swear, if you don't pick up the phone in the next five seconds, I am calling the police. One."

Lazily, Kat got up from the tub and reached for a towel, stepping over the sopping wet bath-mat that she'd have to throw out . . . if any of this was actually happening.

"Two."

Blotting her skin as she went, she strolled out of the bathroom and sat on her bed, reaching for the vanilla-scented body lotion Ellie had given her for her birthday.

"Three."

She began to apply the lotion in slow, languid strokes.

"Please Kat, just be there." Barely above a whisper, Jason's anguished plea socked her in the gut, popping the pretty bubble-world she'd created.

With a cry of alarm she lunged across the bed, fumbling for the receiver. "Jason? Jason, I'm here."

"Oh, thank God. I was so worried." There was a pause and then he added. "I called five times. Why weren't you picking up? Where have you been?"

Kat sighed in irritation as Jason's voice transformed from worried to angry. _When did I marry you? _She disliked it when he did this, when he claimed rights to her life, to be the grand protector of her safety. Even tonight . . .

No, make that especially tonight because he hadn't been there. He hadn't sensed something was wrong, and she couldn't shake the feeling that he _should_ have. But he'd sat in his apartment, telling stories to Ellie, drinking tea, and hadn't felt her world shatter not more than twenty yards away. So no, he didn't get to come late to the dance and complain when she was too tired to go through the motions.

"I just took a shower and didn't hear the phone. I'm sorry." She wasn't really, but she'd say it anyway because that's just what they did with each other. There was a pause of confusion, and she knew instinctively what his next words would be.

"You never take a shower at night."

"Yeah, well . . . I just- I needed a shower tonight. Just something different."

At the silence on the other end, Kat almost lost it again. She knew what was going through his head, the self-reproach he didn't deserve. A part of her wanted nothing more than to tell him everything, to beg him to come over and hold her, just wrap her up in his strength and safety. She was almost about to do just that, when he spoke.

"We'll find him, Kat."

At the promise, she dropped her head and had to bite back a sound that was halfway between a sob and a scream. Suddenly she could feel Billy, his finger on her cheek, resolute hands at the back of her neck, his presence swallowed the room, stifling her voice, and she couldn't tell Jason anything.

Jason would only have one reaction. He'd want to find Billy and hurt him, and she couldn't let that happen, partly because she couldn't shake the feeling that they still owed Billy something more, and partly because she wasn't entirely sure Jason would be successful.

Jason still believed in things like fighting with honor. It was obvious that whatever had happened to Billy, at the very least his notion of what constituted honor had been redefined; at the worst, he'd shed the concept altogether.

_I don't want to repeat this with Jason. He wouldn't surrender as easily. Do you understand?_

She shivered as his parting words played over in her mind. There'd been no concern in his voice, no worry that Jason wouldn't surrender, merely a kind of weary desire to avoid a confrontation, the outcome of which he believed to be predetermined.

With a jolt Kat realized she believed it, too.

"Kat?"

She almost told him to forget the whole thing, that she'd lied, that it hadn't been Billy. _I can't lose you_.

Instead she asked, "Why'd you call?"

"Oh, um . . ." he chuckled self-consciously, "I figured out what I want to get Ellie for her birthday."

They'd been puzzling this over for weeks. Jason didn't have a lot of money, but he liked to make a big deal of his daughter's birthday, liked to make certain she never doubted how grateful he was for her. Kat sat up straighter.

"Oh, what?"

"Ballet lessons."

Her hand tightened on the phone. "Jason . . . no . . ."

"No, just hear me out. Look, I can pay your class rate, and Ellie would love it. The chance to be just like her Aunt Kat . . . she'll flip."

_She shouldn't want to be like me, Jason. She should want to be like her mom. You should want her to be like her mom._

She couldn't have this conversation tonight. "Let me think about, okay?"

"Sure, okay." Jason barely hid the disappointment in his voice. "So, I'll pick you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, tomorrow."

Kat sat on the bed long after Jason rang off, just sat there staring at herself in the mirror above her dresser. From the bright pink of her toenails to the unnatural pale orange of her hair—the disastrous result of an attempt to go red the night Jason kissed her—she looked the same. Same old Kat. He'd barely left a mark, and she wondered if that had been conscious on Billy's part.

It didn't seem fair that her worldview could be so altered, and yet she could remain so unchanged. Scooting off the bed, she stood before the mirror, twisting this way and that, searching for signs, for remnants Billy left behind. The backs of her knees were the worst, a mottled collection of blues and purples that meant she'd have to wear yoga pants at practice tomorrow. There were red marks at the back of her neck and on her wrist, but those would fade.

She needed something, some tangible proof that it had all really happened, that's when it hit her. Rushing to the bathroom, she scrambled over to where she'd shed her clothes and with it . . . yes.

Sinking to her knees, she reached for his communicator, half-expecting it to dissolve into smoke in her fingers. But it stayed, and she closed her hand around the metal, pressing it against her skin, wanting to see the mark.

It hadn't been a dream. It had been real . . .

Oh, God, it had been real.

More than anything, more than the attack or the cold embittered words, the communicator scared her. Every Ranger kept their communicator as a tangible portion of their past, and she'd bet that like her, any of the others could put their hands on it in less than a minute. That Billy had left it with her, tossed it away like a piece of trash, bespoke a severing of connection. It was a declaration that he no longer considered himself a part of them.

With a howl of rage, she hurled the communicator across the room, only realizing what she'd done after it met her shower wall with a crash.

_We're not so easily disposed of._

How dare he! How dare he try to shed them? No one had ever given her a choice, not when she broke up with Tommy but was still expected to keep in touch with all the others, not when everyone just naturally assumed she would take care of Jason and Emily because she was the closest.

He didn't get to choose either. They were Rangers. That was how it worked.

_I'll help you._

_You're assuming there's something left to help. I think I've just demonstrated there's not._

But his words didn't scare her anymore.

_Oh Billy, you should have chosen Jason. He would have surrendered more easily._

- + - + - + - + - + -

Tapping her pen on the pad of paper, Kim frowned down at the pages before her, eyes switching back and forth from the list of names to the stacks of sketchy reports. She could understand why Tommy had left her alone with these. If he'd just told her his suspicions, she would have been skeptical at the very least, and possibly laughed in his face.

But piecing it together for herself, feeling that same slow build of disbelief and dread that Tommy must have felt as the picture started to take shape . . . She had to admit . . . it was harder to dismiss.

Five cities, five high-security facilities . . . completely decimated without a trace of explosive, five names, five bank transfers not more than a month prior to each. So now they were here . . . with a list of potential names and targets.

_Shit._

Bending over, Kim pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes. _What have I gotten myself into?_

"No! No. You don't get to handle me into this . . . this complacency!"

Kim winced as Joe's voice, harsh and bitter, burst into the room. She'd been doing a pretty good job of ignoring the murmurings from the kitchen, letting the soft undercurrents of the conversation blend into the background, but suddenly it swallowed her world, and all she could hear was them.

Then there was a slam of body against the wall, the rustle of fabric, and the soft unmistakable sound of . . .

She stood up and walked to the other side of the room, squeezing her eyes shut, clenching her hands into fists. What was wrong with her? What in the hell was wrong with her? Tommy wasn't hers. She didn't even want him. Didn't even _know_ him. This shouldn't be bothering her, but it was.

"Joe!"

Kim turned to find Joe tearing out of the kitchen, Tommy quick on her heels.

"I told you, Oliver. I'm going for a run." The red-head grabbed a pair of training pants and sweatshirt out of the laundry basket and began to pull on the clothes in aggressive, jerky movements.

"It's two in the damn morning. You'll get yourself mugged."

"Only if I'm _really_ lucky." Joe sounded like she meant it.

"At least take a gun."

Joe paused in the midst of yanking the sweatshirt over her head, then sighed, "All right, the Beretta." Tommy gave her a look, and she scowled. "It's not like I'm planning on using it."

_I'm not here_, Kim realized, _right now, to them, I don't exist._ And she felt like she didn't exist, like this was a separate world playing out before her, watching as Joe bent down to tie her shoelaces, as Tommy walked over and pulling open one of the drawers on the end table next to her, began to load the small compact pistol. Even now, standing right next to him, he was a million miles away, a different person altogether.

Checking the gun a final time, he walked over to Joe and extended it out to her, but he didn't release it when she reached for it. "Don't be stupid."

"Am I ever?" She slid the gun out his hand and tucking it in her waistband turned to go.

"Riley!" Tommy's voice changed, timber, pitch, clip. It became a whip-crack, and Joe responded accordingly. Spinning on her heel, she snapped into what could almost be called attention. If one could stand at attention with arms crossed.

"Four circuits. Back in two hours." It wasn't a suggestion.

Joe smiled and saluted with her middle finger. Kim glanced over at the clock. It was two-twelve now. She had a feeling it would read exactly four-thirteen when Joe came back.

- + - + - + - + -

Trini fought not to gasp in pain as the orderly probed at her abdomen. She'd been holding off on the self-administration of morphine, battling the lure of that little button in favor of having a clear head, but the pain was starting to overwhelm her, becoming a nearly physical thing, smothering coherent thought.

"How long has it been since you had pain medication?" the orderly asked in concern.

Lolling her head to the side, Trini glanced at the policeman who stood just inside the door. She didn't understand why she had a guard, but she wasn't assuming it was for her safety.

"Fifteen minutes ago," she lied.

The orderly frowned. There was something vaguely familiar about it, about him in general, and she almost asked, 'Do I know you?,' but then he met her eyes, and she knew the answer. She did know him, and he shouldn't be here. She just wished she could place him, so she'd know whether to cry for help.

"We should check your I.V. line." He bent over, ostensibly to check the analgesic line, and as he did so whispered in her ear, "It's Rocky. We need to talk, Ranger to Ranger."

Trini worked to continue to breathe slowly and steadily, all too conscious that she was on a heart-rate monitor, and he was taking an almighty fucking risk.

She tried desperately to think of something that would get the cop out of the room, but Rocky beat her to it. Walking over to the policeman, he conducted a sharp, whispered conversation, which resulted in the cop tapping his watch and holding up three fingers.

Rocky hurried back to her bed as the cop left the room. Pulling down the covers of her bed, yanking up her hospital gown, he muttered, "I preyed on his sense of propriety. I've got three minutes to change your dressing. Talk fast."

"Did Tommy send you?"

- + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -

_Well, there you go. I hope everyone enjoyed this. Please let me know your thoughts, hypotheses, etc._

_Also, I am aware that I am going out on a huge limb by crafting an OFC, but I hope I've succeeded in giving her the kind of three-dimensionality necessary to make her a viable character. If she's evoked an emotional response from you (be it positive or negative) then tell me because it means I've succeeded._

_Thanks for reading,_

_Panache_


End file.
